Frank Strada, the head of Tennessee’s prison authority, will resign his post days after the failed execution of death-row inmate Christa Pike, Governor Bill Lee said on Saturday. Strada is expected to leave office later this month, although no successor has yet been announced.
Lee said Strada’s decision came as the state faces an independent investigation into what happened during the attempted execution. “I appreciate that he is willing to put the interests of the people of Tennessee first during this difficult moment,” Lee said, according to a report by The New York Times. “I have accepted his decision to resign and am grateful for his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition of leadership.”
Lee has suspended all future executions and ordered an independent investigation into the attempt to execute Pike. The investigation will examine the circumstances surrounding the execution, which ended without Pike’s death after the state administered the drugs specified in its lethal-injection protocol.
Strada said his resignation was “in the best interest” of Tennessee as the independent inquiry begins. He maintained that he believed the prison authority had followed the established protocol for lethal injection and said he intended to co-operate with investigators. “I want to do everything I can to find out exactly what happened,” Strada said, according to the report.
Pike, 50, remains unconscious following the failed execution and is being kept alive on a ventilator at a hospital in Nashville, according to her lawyers. In a court filing on Friday, her attorneys said she had been intubated and was receiving mechanical ventilation. They said her condition remained critical and that hospital staff were working to save her life and remove the administered pentobarbital from her body.
Pike was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday evening local time. According to the authorities, she was given the two doses of pentobarbital required under the execution protocol. Despite receiving both doses, however, she remained alive.
The failed execution has prompted scrutiny of the procedures followed by Tennessee’s prison authorities. Strada’s assertion that the protocol was followed contrasts with the circumstances that prompted the governor to suspend executions and commission an independent investigation. The source does not provide the findings of that investigation or establish the cause of the failed execution.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 at the time of the crime. During her more than three decades on death row, her lawyers have increasingly focused on her difficult childhood, mental illnesses and her development during her years in prison.
Pike’s attorneys have described the execution attempt as torture. She remains unconscious in hospital as the state begins an independent examination of the circumstances surrounding the failed execution, while Strada prepares to leave his position later this month.
